Category Archive: Life

These are the socks I started with the Felici yarn pattern called Hopscotch on number 2 needles. The photo is true to the colors. Since I am a slow knitter it takes me about 40 minutes to do each color stripe and this pattern is just k3, p1 around and around. I am ready to do the heel. After I finish the heel and the turn it, I’ll put it in the car to work on while waiting for appointments, etc. So far, I’ve been working on them in the evenings when I’m too tired to do anything else.

Today was a good day. I have 2 stalls 12 x 15 each, this being one. The other area is 12 x 30. I cleaned the larger one yesterday and this one today.

Then I worked at getting hay down. The shadows changed the color of the hay, but you can see a bale on the tractor and I did manage to get another bale on top of this one. This type of work takes more thought and tractor maneuvering, because I don’t have the strength yet to lift these 100# bales. But I did get it loaded and moved down the road and into the rams area to be able to feed them. Usually my neighbor man does this, but was not available today.

After this and lunch, I took DH to the chiropractor and while he was there, I was able to get the groceries. After dinner, I rested for a bit. I don’t want to spoil a night’s sleep by resting too much.

It makes me happy when I can see accomplishments like this and I feel like I didn’t waste the day. I’m hoping to get back on track after too many of life’s interruptions. Well – after the holidays anyway. Part of the problem is that I didn’t set goals and make schedules for myself this year like I normally do. When I don’t, it seems I don’t get much done.

What an experience – not to be repeated. It was so wet when I cleaned the barn last week, I put down extra shavings. That worked great because it was much easier to clean this week. The problem: because of less weight I used the shovel instead of the pitchfork. That would have been okay if I had handled it like the pitchfork. Instead, without realizing it, I used a different motion. I have been unable to use my right hand because of a swollen wrist from muscles not usually in play. For an extreme right handed person, eating or writing left handed is a challenge. Needless to say, I felt very tied down during those days and I am so happy to have wrists and hands normal again.

Before the wrist incident, I knitted these socks to this point, but find I don’t like this wool and gauge for socks. I will start over with a different yarn.

GOTTA LOVE a SON

We have an adult son who lives in a part of the house and with whom we share a kitchen and laundry room. I told him, it was his turn to buy laundry detergent.

Here is what I saw when I walked into the laundry room. We only use 2 a year and he informed me that he had just saved us several trips to Walmart. I don’t think that is the only reason I shop Walmart. But we have laundry detergent for what looks like 4 years. Sometimes, life is just amusing.

Remember when this was the best there was?

My parents saved to be able to purchase this: a record player/radio inside a nice cabinet. It was a joy to them to be able to have such a nice item.

They were able to purchase a matching record cabinet to hold their albums as they accumulated. Because they took very good care of anything they acquired, all the albums are in excellent shape.

I chose to keep these more as furniture memories than anything else. They have filled 2 corners in the living room and serve as a table for various “treasures” This week as we have been putting up the holiday decorations, I looked to see what records might be in this cabinet. Ah, Christmas music – what fun to go back through those albums.

We have been enjoying listening to these old records – songs, Handel’s Messiah, etc. After Christmas there is Hawaiian music, classical, and spiritual music. I’m so happy I saved these and someday I hope one of our children will treasure them as well.

It’s been bright, but freezing cold outside, so what better to do than processing food.

In the summer, when time is at a premium, the tomatoes and other vegetables often get bagged and frozen for when there is more time. So yesterday, I pulled out the tomatoes, peppers, onions, celery tops, and other items including small left overs to make a tomato sauce which simmered all day. I started with 24 quarts of produce in 2 large pots. This morning, we jarred and processed it. I ended up with 12 quarts of tomato/spaghetti sauce.

This is what I saw walking up to the barn. Such a nice ram. It was cold and the hen found a warm woolly blanket.

The tree is standing now, the ornaments are pulled out and currently there is one big mess until the tree is decorated.

Citrus plants in the Pacific NW:

In front is the lime tree – a bit straggly, but has three limes.

The orange tree has 3 large oranges, but they are so very green. Does anyone know if they will still ripen? – They are in the heated hoop house.

Lemon lost one of its lemons so has one small lemon.

Garden:

The hoop house garden is nearly done for this year. I still have to clean it up. I picked what was left, and still have the aisles to clean. There are new potato plants and garlic across the back a long with three kale plants. There is some winter broccoli up front and that will be all we will do in here this year.

Will these tomatoes still ripen?

I have a long list of things I want to get done – just like most of you do. Yesterday God ‘s nudge turned my path a different way. I’ve been feeling guilty about not visiting my neighbor in the rehab home since she broke her hip. Yesterday, she called and said “when you come today, will you bring….” Well, I wasn’t planning on going, but decided that must be God’s nudge.

I went to the post office and got the stamps she wanted, then we went to visit her. After that we stopped and did two other chores not on yesterday’s list. The interesting thing was that I got everything done that needed to be done without feeling the normal stress.

Pierre is our dominant colored ram and has been in pain all week. He is very weak and having a difficult time standing. We called the vet who doesn’t know what is causing the problem. So we are giving Pierre a shot of B vitamin + .

He dislikes the shot and does get up when getting it, but you can see he is not a bit perky. He is eating, drinking, and eliminating normally, so we wait and watch a few more days.

It will freeze hard next week and then even these few flowers will be gone. I will miss there happy yellow blooms.

All of you know how one thing leads to another. This morning after making Broccoli soup and steel-cut oats, I was cleaning off the counter top. I wanted to put the potato starch into a specific container. That was no problem, but I didn’t know where the lid was. Usually the lids are kept with the container, but this lid was missing. So I proceeded to look in the possible drawers. I ended up cleaning out 9 drawers plus the pantry, looking for that lid, which I never did find, nor did the counter get totally cleaned. I gave up

In the midst of this, I remembered that we are changing a few more sheep coats tomorrow and I needed to wash coats to have enough clean for that. Now I also have a few more coats to mend.

Next, I needed to move the dog food that Costco delivered Friday. I order every 3 months and get 12 bags each weighing 30 pounds. Again, not a simple task, because as you know, one thing leads to another. I got the tractor, brought it to the front door, and piled on 8 of the boxes (Costco puts each bag into a box). While I was doing that, I noticed that the plants in front had frozen, so pulled them out and loaded them on top of the food. I took the food to the barn, and put the frozen plant material on the compost pile.

Now to get three more boxes to take to the studio, which is where we keep the food for the dog who guards the sheep in the lower pasture. I picked those boxes up and went around to the studio, delivered them, and then decided that it was a mess around the door. So I loaded the peat moss , some garbage and the water trough that I will be using for the boys in an upper pasture. Off I went to take the peat moss to the upper hoop house along with some other items. On the way, I left the garbage in the garbage house, the trough near the gate in the upper pasture, and the peat moss in the hoop house.

But it didn’t stop there. Once you clean up a part of an area, you want to keep going, so we loaded all the parts of the fleeces that are too soiled to sell and took 3 loads of that up to the compost – well, I started a new pile near the new garden. Then there was another load of thermalite etc to go to the hoop house and another load of junk for the garbage shed. Most of this stuff was too heavy for me to move before I had the tractor. We spent 3 hours doing this and enjoyed a late lunch. It was nice to have it already made and we could just heat and eat.

After lunch it was back to the barn to clean a third of the stalls and feed the animals. We will finish the other two stalls tomorrow and sweep off the cement areas by the two back doors, since they are now free of all the “extras” Like I said, “one thing leads to another”, but it feels so good to have it done. Most of it I couldn’t do without the tractor. I am so thankful we bought it.

Happy Thanksgiving 2018

I was trying to make more interesting platters. This turkey will get a head touch up. I think the owl will get shortened and I’ll try avocado rounds for the eyes. They should be ripe by morning. Sometimes it’s difficult to get just the look you’re trying to achieve.

This has been a fast year, hasn’t it. We’re nearly to the end of 2018 and I for one will end the year with left over projects. Enjoy the holidays and know there’s another whole year to work on those projects. Happy Thanksgiving to each of you.

These two embroidered potholders were done totally on the machine. I first hooped wash away stabilizer, then I stitched that out. I then spray basted the thin batting to the top piece, and placed it in the stitching line. I finished the top side, then for the bottom I spray basted the insulbrite to the bottom piece and basted them both to the under side of the potholder. I think by adding the extra layer of batting, they will be thick enough.

We had the birthday party yesterday at Panera’s and the office girls were each given two potholders. They were delighted to be remembered. Our daughter was given sheets and other bedding since she just had a new queen size bed delivered. It’s a lovely time once a year and we do it before the holidays, which worked out really well this year, since her birthday is on Thanksgiving day.

It has turned cold and that means in a barn, there are more rodents seeking a warm place, where food is available. So we have several bait traps out with this product. The animals cannot get inside the traps. However, someone helping us emptied a trap into a garbage bag and put a different bait into the trap.

I looked in the office and saw Beau, with the garbage bag ripped apart and he was very interested in the contents. That frightened me! There is no antidote for the rodenticide used in Tomcat Bait Chunx. It is toxic in small amounts. A toxic amount in a dog will manifest either as paralysis or convulsions. It is deadly.

So off to the vet we rushed. They made him vomit and then gave him activated charcoal. And we pray while waiting for 4 days. We don’t really know for sure if he ingested it or how much. We do know that 2.5 cubes of this stuff are missing. It is toxic by weight and his being a big boy at 99# is helpful here.

This is a photo I snapped of him looking and playing normally this afternoon. We’re supposed to keep our eye on him, but if he shows symptoms, there’s nothing that can be done. Not a good thing. So we cleaned the barn today with him helping us. Kept us and him busy and now the sheep have a nice clean barn to mess up.

If you use any poisons, please check and recheck that other pets or children have no way to get to them.